Abortion Is Dying. Long Live Contraception.

With strong odds that the Supreme Court will soon reverse Roe v. Wade, the abortion lobby is frantically trying to gain public support. One talking point that I’ve seen come up again and again is fearmongering that those anti-abortion types won’t stop at abortion; they’re coming for your contraception next!

This is ridiculous for a few reasons. First, let’s just take a look at this 2020 Gallup data, shall we?

Nine out of ten Americans believe that birth control is morally acceptable. Logically, that has to include the vast majority of pro-lifers. Indeed, birth control was the least controversial topic surveyed. By these numbers, it would be easier to bring back the prohibition of alcohol than it would be to ban contraception! But only 44% of Americans considered abortion to be morally acceptable.

Those beliefs extend to practice. Nearly two thirds of American women of reproductive age use birth control, and a strong body of research tells us that percentage will grow as abortion is restricted. But less than a quarter of American women will ever order the destruction of their unborn children.

What about Griswold v. Connecticut, they say? It’s true that Griswold, the 1965 case striking down a Massachusetts ban on contraceptives, contained significant right-to-privacy language that Roe v. Wade later echoed. That doesn’t mean that reversing Roe would also reverse Griswold, though. Courts don’t revisit old cases just because they feel like it; the Justices would have to be presented with a case that actually involves contraceptives. The pending Dobbs case concerns abortions after 15 weeks and has nothing to do with contraceptives. Even if the Court did have such a case in front of it — which is never going to happen, thanks to the overwhelming public support for birth control discussed above — distinguishing abortion and contraception is easy. There is already a long line of cases recognizing that states have a legitimate interest in protecting human life. That interest can outweigh privacy in the abortion context, but has no relevance when it comes to contraception.

The late Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was pro-choice, anticipated that the decaying jurisprudence of abortion could be amputated to save the healthy body of privacy law. He wrote the opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage a Constitutional right on privacy grounds, without citing single abortion case.

When abortion advocates claim that contraception is “next,” they are hoping they can tie their unpopular cause to a popular one. We’ve seen this tactic before. Don’t buy it. Unlike abortion, birth control does not kill anyone. There is nothing wrong with preventing fertilization. Abortion is dying. Long live contraception.

[Photo credit: Deon Black on Unsplash.]